The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 14 | Issue 23 | Number 5 | Article ID 4983 | Dec 01, 2016

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Napalm in US Bombing Doctrine and Practice, 1942-1975

Marine Guillaume

F r e n c h t r a n s l a t i o n a v a i l a b l e(http://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/fr/document/le-napalm-dans-la-doctrine-et-la-pratique-a m e r i c a i n e s - d u -bombardement-1942-1975)

Abstract

If the doctrine of strategic bombing has beenthe object of much attention in the militaryhistory and international relations literature(Biddle 2002, Pape 2011), few studies havefocused on the means deployed to achieve thebombings. Yet, these means are crucial tounderstand three decisive aspects of thedoctrine and practice of strategic bombing: (1)how they have been defined; (2) how they havechanged; and (3) how they have been perceivedand used by different actors (militaries,international institutions and public opinion)over time (3). This article highlights theseissues through the analysis of napalmutilization by the US military. It demonstratesthat the massive use of this weapon, from itscreation in 1942 to the Vietnam War, is at thecore of a shift in the doctrine and practice ofAmerican strategic bombing. The articledemonstrates that analysis of the weaponsdeployed for ‘strategic bombing’ enriches thehistoriography – and the understanding - of thedoctrine and practice of strategic bombingitself.

Trang Bang, Vietnam, 8 June 1972

When Harvard scientist Louis Fieser created anew type of incendiary weapon which he callednapalm on 4 July 1942, he probably did notexpect that he would become the ‘father’ of aweapon at the very core of American bombingwithin a decade. He probably did not expecteither that, after having been widely laudedand awarded for this invention for more than25 years, he would have to rewrite his officialbiography so that the word “napalm” ceased toappear in it.1

Interestingly, the personal trajectory of Fieser -from “praise” to “shame” - echoes thetrajectory of the perceptions attached tonapalm throughout the second half of thetwentieth century. Napalm experienced duringthe first twenty years following its creationstrong support in the eyes of prominentAmerican military leaders (Curtis LeMay beingthe most famous figure among them), andrelative indifference by the US domesticpopulation. During this period, the US militaryincreasingly deployed napalm, and, to use the

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words of Harry Truman’s Secretary of WarRobert Patterson in referring to incendiaryweapons, “this ‘dud’ of World War II becameone of the most potent weapons in the PacificOperations.”2 Yet, this ‘popularity’ rapidlyfaded during and after the Vietnam War. Theincreasing deployment of napalm by the USmilitary from 1945 to 1975 preceded asignificant decrease in napalm utilization:never after the Vietnam War has the weaponbeen used in such quantity. While it is true thatsome incendiary weapons – with compositionvery close to napalm - were deployed duringthe Iraqi and Afghanistan wars, their quantitywas small compared to those deployed inVietnam and in the Korean War (1950-53). In2001, the US Army organized a ‘last canisterceremony’ at the Fallbrook Naval WeaponsStation to publicly destroy its last remainingstockpiles of napalm. Like Fieser who erasedthe word napalm from his official biography,the US Army proclaimed to the world that ithad eliminated napalm from its weaponry.

Understanding the variations in US bombingand doctrine with a normative approachfocused on napalm

Why was the napalm used less and less afterthe Vietnam War? How did the use of napalmduring the war influence US strategy andpractice of aerial attack?

The article argues that the framing of napalmby the US military as well as by activists fromcivil society and members of the UnitedNations, which occurred at the end and afterthe Vietnam War, directly impacted USbombing doctrine and practice.

The US military came to associate napalm andits destructive power with the failure of theattrition strategy deployed during the VietnamWar. The attrition strategy -- which consists inthe sustained process of wearing down anopponent so as to force its physical collapsethrough continuous losses in personnelequipment and, eventually, breaking their will

to fight -- did not erode the opponent’sresistance.3 It rather led the US military toengage in a long escalation of violence whichnot only exhausted its own resources, butultimately undermined the support of both theVietnamese and the US population necessary towin the war. The consensus within the USmilitary that the Vietnam War was a strategicfailure led it to initiate a deep shift in militaryculture4 which promoted a new strategy ofrestraint, that is a population-centeredapproach that acknowledges the necessity toregulate practices of war, protect civilians andspare harm during military operations tosecure civilian support. This led, the USmilitary to deploy weapons whose firepowercould be controlled and directed againstprecise targets.5 As a consequence, napalmceased to be at the core of the US militarystrategy because its destructive power was noteasy to control and could not really be limitedto a target. The result was that napalm was defacto excluded from the new dominant doctrineof strategic bombing.

This US military reframing of napalm – from astrategic asset to a liability as a weapon–coincided with the criticisms of napalm byactivists from civil society and by members ofthe United Nations. The escalation of violencethat took place in Vietnam inspired terror andindignation not only in the eyes of the localpopulation but also of a large part of Americancivil society and members of the UnitedNations. Some of the latter denounced the US-Vietnam War as one that killed innocent people(Vietnamese civi l ians but also youngAmericans). Napalm, largely because of thepowerful impact of some images enshrined inthe collective memory and the collectiveapprehension attached to the use of fire in war,became reframed and portrayed as the symbolof an illegitimate means of warfare. This frameled the United Nations to define moreconstraining legal rules to limit the use ofnapalm based on Protocol III of the Conventionon Certain Conventional Weapons (CCCW)

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adopted in 1980. The negative symbolic chargeattached to napalm coupled with the new legalconstraints framing its use outweighed anytactical advantage potentially gained with theweapon.6

This article focuses (1) on the changingapproaches to the uses of napalm by the USmilitary from World War II to the present; itthen (2) shows how the perception of napalmand attrition strategy within US militarychanged after the Vietnam War before (3)analyzing how activists and certain members ofthe United Nations framed, after the VietnamWar, napalm as an illegitimate and illegalmeans of warfare.

Napalm and the doctrine of attrition: fromcreation to the Vietnam climax

The creation of napalm (1942): the invention ofan “efficient” incendiary weapon

The creation of napalm on 4 July 1942 by LouisFieser crowned a succession of experiments onthe Harvard campus beginning in 1940 underthe direction of the National Defense ResearchCommittee. The purpose of the experimentswas to improve the efficiency of incendiaryagents that on the eve of World War II, hadbeen ‘banished’ to the ‘periphery’ of USmilitary doctrine. This relegation can beexplained by two facts. First, for a long time,incendiary weapons represented a majortechnical challenge, mostly because of theineluctable trade-off between destruction andprecision its users had to face. Second, thedevelopment and research on incendiaryweapons were neglected, to the advantage ofchemical weapons, which were perceived as farmore efficient than incendiary weapons, suchas flamethrowers. Things changed with thedevelopment of napalm.

Napalm is a specific type of incendiary, a“thickened oil incendiary agent” whosecomposition and name changed over time (i.e.napalm, napalm B and MK77) and was rapidly

recognized as a highly efficient incendiaryweapon for three reasons. First, it greatlyincreased the probability of igniting otherinflammable materials in the target area.Second, napalm has great visco-elasticity,which extends the range of the jet of flamingfuel projected by flamethrowers.7 Third, napalmis not self-igniting and therefore can be moreeasily handled than other incendiary agents.These factors explain why the US militarydeployed napalm shortly after its creation.

Napalm in World War II (1943-1945): the firstdeployments

Napalm was deployed for the first time in thebattlefield of Papua New Guinea, on 15December 1943 with flamethrowers. The USmilitary then delivered more and more napalmthrough aerial attacks, first in the Pacific (15February 1944 near the Pacific Island ofPonhpei) and six months later in Europe (in theimmediate aftermath of D-Day). Rapidly napalmreappeared in the Pacific: more than 2/3 of thenapalm deployed by the US during WWII(14,000 tons) was dropped there, much of itduring the Tokyo attack considered by CurtisLeMay as “the most devastating raid in thehistory of aerial warfare”, on 9 March 1945,which killed an estimated 84,000 civilians,wounded 90,000 of them and destroyed morethan a quarter of the entire city.8 The bombingof Tokyo, and eventually the destruction of 64Japanese cities (with incendiary raids startingon 10 March 1945), exceeded the “greatestconflagration of the western world” duringWWII, and, is viewed by certain historians, asmore costly than the nuclear bombing ofHiroshima and Nagasaki.9 Because studies ofWWII generally focus on the European theater,napalm is rarely depicted as a decisive weaponof WWII. Moreover, because the weapon wasonly deployed at the end of the conflict, thetotal quantity of napalm delivered during WWII(14,000 tons) only represents 17% ofincendiary weapons (IW) deployed by the USduring WWII. Because the US was the only

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state to have napalm during the war andbecause it was not the heaviest user ofincendiary bombers (the British Royal Air Forcedropped twice as much as the US Air Force),napalm represented only 5% of the entirequantity of incendiary weapons deployed by theAllies during the conflict.

Firebombing of Tokyo, 1945

The Korean War (1950-1953): the number 1weapon

Although napalm was used in several conflictsin the aftermath of WWII -- for instance in theGreek Civil War (1944-49) and Indochina(1946-54) 10 --, these utilizations did not equalthe quantity of incendiary weapons deployed byUS planes during the short but devastatingKorean War (1950-1953). Napalm was

delivered in such large quantities from the veryfirst day, 26 June 1950, to the extent that theNew York Herald Tribune provided thisprovocative headline in October 1950: “Napalmthe No. 1 Weapon in Korea”. 1 1 As theStockholm International Peace ResearchInstitute reported, “a total of 32,357 tons ofnapalm fell on Korea, about double thatdropped on Japan in 1945. Not only did theallies drop more bombs on Korea than in thePacific theater during WWII – 635,000 tonsversus 503,000 tons – more of what fell wasnapalm, in both absolute and relative terms.”12.At this time, napalm was regarded as a veryefficient weapon to achieve area or strategicbombing, that is bombing which not onlytargeted a tactical infrastructure or positionbut covered the whole area surrounding thetarget.

Bombing of village near Hanchon, NorthKorea, 10 May 1951.

Between the Korean and Vietnam Wars(1953-1961): the weapon of attrition

In the period following the Korean War (1953)and preceding the Vietnam War (1961), napalmreappeared twice on the battlefield, in Algeriaand in Cuba. There is no official record of this,but several testimonies of journalists, and evenmilitaries on the ground, acknowledge that

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napalm was used and produced in the Frenchbases during the Algeria War (1954-1962). TheFrench were trained by US pilots to deploynapalm from the air.13 Some argue that napalmmay have destroyed two thirds of the entireAlgerian forest.14 The second major napalmdisplay on the battlefield occurred in Cuba,from 1956 to 1959 and again in 1961: theBatista regime reportedly used significantquantities of napalm against Castro’s rebeltroops. Incendiary weapons -- especiallynapalm -- became a weapon of choice fordestroying infrastructure and resources tobreak the morale and undermine support forrebels.

The Vietnam War (1961-1973): napalm at thecore of the bombing strategy

The first known deployment of napalm duringthe Vietnam War occurred on 27 February1962. Two South Vietnamese pilots trained bythe US, dropped napalm on North Vietnamesepositions. By 1966, napalm was a core elementof the bombing strategy.15

After 1962, the quantity of incendiary weaponsand napalm rapidly reached new levels: “about388,000 tons of US napalm fell on Indochina inthe decade from 1963 to 1973, compared to32,357 tons used on Korea in just over threeyears and 16,500 tons dropped on Japan in1945.” Indeed, “all the munitions, includingincendiary, were used in quantities two orthree times the total used by US forces inWWII.”16 From 1964, napalm-B, conceived toignite more easily and continue to blaze over alonger period of time, was massively deployedin both North and South Vietnam. The peak ofdisplayed napalm was reached in April 1972.The last US troop withdrawal occurred in 1973,after almost ten years of continuous bombingswith napalm: “South Vietnam, despite theassistance of perhaps 400,000 tons of napalmdropped on its behalf, surrendered on April 30,1975. Napalm, and with it America, had lost itsfirst war. ”17

After the Vietnam War (1973-2011): thedisgrace

After Vietnam, napalm was used in severalwars, especially in the 2000s in Afghanistanand Iraq. The US military acknowledgedrecently that many MK77 bombs had been usedduring these wars. Even though these bombswere not called napalm, their incendiaryproperties are very similar. If MK-77 andnapalm have a different name, only a slightlydifferent distribution of constituents makesnapalm different from the liquid contained inMK77. Effects and military advantage areconsidered identical.18 When a prominentAmerican general was questioned on thepresence of MK77 on the battlefields ofAfghanistan, he replied that the US Army wasnot using the “old napalm” but “a new form ofnapalm”.19 This illustrates two interestingpoints. First, the US military still uses napalm,but in much lower quantity: this supports thefact that the weapon – and the strategy ofattrition which aims at massively destroyingmilitary but also civilian infrastructures andresources - is perceived as being tacticallyeffective. This seems particularly true forcounterinsurgency, where those who fight arehard to identify and hide among civilians.20

Second, the military deployed a new label(MK77) to designate napalm, underlining thehigh level of opprobrium attached to theweapon. The military prefers not to explicitlymention the name napalm out of concern for

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public opinion.21

The framing of napalm by the US military:from the ideal weapon of attrition to aliability

In order to understand why napalm fell intodisgrace in the eyes of the military after theVietnam War, and why the military questionedits strategic utility, it is first crucial tounderstand variations in the aerial attackdoctrine. A weapon can never be studied exnihilo, apart from the doctrine that promotes –or impedes – its deployment. In this case,napalm cannot be dissociated from the aerialbombing doctrine.

Strategy of attrition versus precision bombing

If the practice of aerial bombing was marginalbefore the massive German incendiary attacksof the Spanish Civil War (notably, Guernica),they had preoccupied militaries since the1910s, and many of them tried to formulate thebest aerial strategic doctrine. The debate overthe best aerial strategic doctrine, that is themost efficient way to bomb the opponent, canbe roughly divided into two positions: thosewho favor the attrition strategy (i.e. thesustained process of wearing down anopponent so as to force collapse throughcontinuous losses in personnel equipment and,eventually, breaking their will to fight) andthose who favor the restraint strategy (i.e. apopulat ion-centered approach thatacknowledges the necessity to regulatepractices of war to protect civilians). Of course,for the actors, these two positions are less twoopposing stances than the two poles of acontinuum: depending on the context and theopponent, the level of destruction or restraintcan vary substantially. 22

The attrition strategy

Following the precepts of Giulio Douhet,proponents of the strategy of attrition contendthat the air bombings have to strike two

targets. They first have to strike civilians,preferably with maximum destructive power inorder to break their morale and eventually leadthem to stop supporting their government andtheir military. They also believe that destroying‘strategic resources’ will eventually constrainstates, rendering them unable to sustain thewar efforts, to capitulate..23 They also have totarget plants which provide crucial resourcesfor waging war, roads and railroads, andeverything which allows the opponent tosustain the fight, in order to force him tocapitulate. The bombing must be massive, inorder to both demonstrate the superiority ofthe bombing capacity and to precipitate theopponent’s collapse.

Weapons used to achieve attrition strikesgenerally have huge firepower with thecapacity to destroy resistant infrastructure:after WWII and before the Vietnam War if themajority of European states used thermite andexplosive bombs to realize attrition strikes, theUnited States designated napalm, soon after itsinvention, as the core weapon of its massiveincendiary bombings.

The restraint strategy

Proponents of precision bombing and restraintstrategy criticize the two core assumptions ofthe attrition strategy. While both strategiesadvocate tactical strikes (i.e. strikes on targetssuch as weapons plants, railroads, bridges withimmediate military utility), proponents of theprecision strategy favor the use of weaponswith moderate firepower, that will not destroythe entire area and will be less likely to killcivilians or destroy infrastructure surroundingthe target. Two reasons explain this position:first, strikes with moderate firepower help thestate conserve resources and men. Second,massive bombings, rather than breaking themorale of civilians and combatants, oftenreinforce their determination to fight. Thestrategy of attrition is more likely to createcollateral damage, in which infrastructures and

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civilians who were not primarily targeted bythe strike are destroyed, wounded or killedbecause of their proximity to the target.Collateral damage generally reinforces thedetermination to fight.

Vietnam: the ethical turn and the end of thestrategy of attrition

Several factors could explain the shift, from thedevelopment of new precision bombingstrategies to pressure from civil society toreduce civilian deaths. Clearly, many in the USmilitary became more skeptical of theefficiency of attrition strategies after theVietnam War. Consequently, the reputation ofthe napalm as a tactical asset was undermined.

From 1945 to the Vietnam War, many in themilitary regarded napalm as an effectiveweapon of war. Curtis LeMay, the Air Forcegeneral who devised an effective strategy forfirebombing including the use of napalmagainst Japan repeatedly advocated incendiarybombings on the ground that “the wholepurpose of strategic warfare is to destroy theenemy’s potential to wage war”.24

Yet, the apparent consensus over the‘normality’ of napalm seemed to have changedduring the Vietnam War following repeatedaerial attacks on civilians with napalm. Somesoldiers felt a strong repulsion against napalm,specifically the odor of skin burnt by it. Thisodor haunted many of them after the VietnamWar.25 Because they sometimes flew close tothe ground, pilots saw the terrible effects of theweapon, leading some to condemn it asinhumane. Curtis LeMay described theresponse of some of his men: “We killedcivilians, friendly civilians, and bombed theirhomes, fired whole villages with the occupants,women and children, and ten times as manyhidden communist soldiers, under showers ofnapalm, and the pilots come back to their ships,stinking of the vomit twisted from their vitalsby the shock of what they had to do.”26

Of course, napalm did not suddenly become aninhumane means of warfare in the eyes of USmilitary officers after the Vietnam war: theyrather started to believe that the terribleeffects the weapons inflicted on the targetedpopulations ultimately outweighed the limitedstrategic advantage of the weapon. Also, abroader change in attitudes regarding civilianharm in warfare occurred following theAmerican defeat in Vietnam.27 MatthewEvangelista perfectly summarizes the long-termchanges in the way the United States and itsallies came to approach strategic bombing:

“The norms governing bombing -- andparticularly the harm it imposes on civilians --have evolved considerably over a century: fromdeliberate attacks against rebellious villagersby Italian and British colonial forces in theMiddle East to institutionalized practicesseeking to avoid civilian casualties in the U.S.counterinsurgency and antiterrorist wars oftoday. In between, the strategic bombingcampaigns of World War II caused greatcivilian destruction through fire-bombing ofcities and, ultimately, the atomic attacksagainst Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”28

Changing legal norms and collectiveperceptions: the framing of napalm as anillegitimate and illegal weapon after theVietnam War

Napalm bombings not only “epitomized” thestrong skepticism and criticism attached to theattrition strategy and the escalation of violenceit created in the Vietnam War. It also becamefor many activists a symbol, not only of aninhumane war, but also of the inhumanity ofcertain means of warfare that violate the lawsof war.

Napalm and the domestic population: fromindifference to indignation

If several members of the United Nationsstarted to seriously address the issue of napalmin 1970, at the very end of the Vietnam conflict,

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US domestic critics had already begun toprotest against the weapon’s use as early as1966. This domestic pressure against napalmtook a var ie ty o f f o rms , f rom la rged e m o n s t r a t i o n s a n d t e a c h - i n s t odemonstrations against the Dow Corporationwhich produced the napalm used in Vietnam.

Many opponents of the Vietnam War started tospecifically denounce the use of napalm by theUS military. One reason for this is that napalmwas associated in the popular imagery withterrible injuries and suffering to civilians,especially children. The first images of babiesand children hit by napalm started to circulatein 1964 through mass circulation magazines. Ifthey did not trigger a particular reaction in1964, this started to change after 1967, asprotesters were often seen brandishing thesepictures. These images contributed to theperception that napalm was an inhumaneweapon. One image, particularly captured theattention of Americans and citizens of manyother countries: the Pulitzer Prize winner‘Accidental napalm’ (Avai lable here(http://www.apimages.com/Collection/Landing/Photographer-Nick-Ut-The-Napalm-Girl -/ebfc0a860aa946ba9e77eb786d46207e))

‘Accidental napalm’

Napalm, like the atomic bomb, is one of a fewweapons tightly attached to one specificrepresentation in the public imagination. Thisis the picture taken by Nick Ut on June 8, 1972,in a South Vietnamese village hit by an aerialattack of napalm. The photo was published inthe New York Times and won the Pulitzer Pricethe same year. It circulated worldwide and wasfrequently brandished during anti-wardemonstrations next to the placard “napalmsticks to kids”. This picture achieved a status asa “public icon”, representing not only thecruelty of the Vietnam War, during which manycivilians were deliberately targeted, but theinhumanity of war in general.29

Retracing the history of the picture is

particularly interesting as it reveals how thecollective imagery creates and shapes symbolicpictures. Ut’s photograph is commonly thoughtof as representing a US napalm strike against aVietnamese village. This is only partially true: itwas in fact a South Vietnamese, not a US, pilotwho dropped napalm on the village. Of course,US pilots trained the South Vietnamese pilotsand provided napalm. They therefore have afull responsibility for the terrible sufferingcreated by napalm, but they did not launch theattack on the village. Moreover, the village wasnot the initial target of the South Vietnamesepilots: they were supposed to hit anothervillage suspected of hosting opponents. Thismistake was underlined with the words chosenfor the title of the picture (‘accidental’). Thefact that the destruction of the village withnapalm was neither originally planned nor ledby US pilots does not mitigate the gravity of theattack.

Regardless, the image captures somethingessential at the core of the denunciationagainst napalm: the fact that the weapon,because of its firepower and capacity to igniterapidly and for a long time, was also used as atool to terrorize and hurt civilians. The USmilitary first denounced the picture, but laterengaged in a ‘war of images’: the US Armyorganized a photo display of the very samechild burnt by napalm (by then an adult calledby her name Kim Phuc), together with a USpilot allegedly responsible for the napalmattack on her village: John Plummer.30 In thisphotograph, called “Meeting at the Wall” wesee both Plummer and the child, now adult,sitting at the same table, smiling, reunited forthe Veterans day celebrated at the Wall, that isthe Vietnam Veterans Memorial located inWashington D.C..31 In any event, the pictureremained relatively unknown, its impact neverequaled that of the Pulitzer Price picture.32

The opprobrium

Soon after 1966 a certain repugnance emerged

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not only against napalm, but also against thosewho were associated with it. While Louis Fieserwas awarded several medals for havingcontributed to the creation of napalm in the1950s, the situation radically changed for himafter 1966. He was then repeatedly criticizedfor his role in the development of napalm.Everything changed for the Dow Corporation(i.e; the producer of the napalm used inVietnam) in 1968. Students refused to apply forjobs there; religious groups protested againstit, important universities refused it access tostudent job fairs. This ultimately led thecompany to cease napalm production in 1969.Yet, even now, the company is still taintedproducing napalm.

By the late 1960s, the status of napalm hadchanged fundamentally in the popularimagination. Napalm was no longer just aweapon. Rather it had became a weapontargeting children or a weapon exemplifyingthe violence exerted by the US in Vietnam bothin the US and internationally. In sum, theVietnam War transformed napalm into anobject “vested with a strong social power whichgoes beyond its material capacity”33. Napalmbecame a symbol.

Anthropological fear

The opprobrium attached to napalm alsoderives from the intense fear that the weaponprovokes not only to those who are exposed toit, but to those who observe its effects. Napalmburns to the bone but does not cause bleeding:persons hit by napalm die most often becauseof internal hemorrhage, suffocation or intenseburns. The same type of effects can beobserved in people exposed to chemical orbiological agents. Yet, several authors whostudied chemical weapons believe that theseweapons which kill without causing bleedingwould create an intense fear for they wouldblur the founding anthropological barriers ofour societies between women (who bleed fromthe inside) and men (who bleeds outside)34.

According to them, this would represent an‘anthropological transgression’ that wouldultimately provoke an ‘anthropological fear’because it would destroy the symbolic divisionbetween the sexes, yet at the core of everycommunity.35

The intense fear might also be created by thefact that napalm kills without offering thepossibility for the soldier to demonstrate hisheroic qualities. For the same reasons as withchemical weapons, napalm is an anti-chivalricweapon: bravery, engagement and heroismcannot save the combatant. 37 Combatantsbecome anonymous soldiers who canpotentially be killed in terrible suffering at anytime, without having the time to prove theirskills or their bravery. Several testimonies ofsoldiers, but also of military historians tend tosupport this argument. Robert Neer mentionsthe Soldier James Ransone who wrote, afterhaving seen his own men accidently hit bynapalm: “Where the napalm had burned theskin to a crisp, it would be peeled back fromthe face, arms, legs… like fried potato chips.Men begged to be shot. I couldn’t (shootthem)”.38

Making napalm illegal: the decisive role ofSecretary General U Thant in framing napalmas illegal

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U Thant

The repeated use of napalm to terrorize civilianpopulations in Vietnam, shed light on the dualnecessity to reinforce the legal rules whichframe this destructive weapon and to condemnthe United Sates for the terrible violence inVietnam. The emergence of incendiaryweapons on international consciousness wasthe result of their use in Vietnam War.Secretary General U Thant was alerted to theproblematic aspect of napalm during theTeheran Conference (1969) which investigatedthe need for additional humanitarianinternational conventions to prohibit certainmeans of warfare that threatened civilians andthe environment. He was also deeply concernedwith the situation in Vietnam and wanted tolimit the terrible exactions committed by theUnited States (inter alia, the use of agentorange39, the massacre of civilians and thedeployment of napalm). According to a pressrelease of 19 May 1972 by Secretary GeneralKurt Waldheim, who concluded the movement

initiated by U Thant, U Thant said: “ You areaware that during the last two weeks I havepublicly expressed my deep concern about theVietnam conflict. For reasons which are nodoubt clear to all of you, the UN has still notbeen able to play the role that I feel it should incontributing towards a solution of this problem.In the past the UN repeatedly was criticized fornot dealing actively with the war in Vietnam. Asyou are aware, I have recently taken the step ofpresenting a memorandum to the President ofthe Security Council.” 40

Framing napalm at the international level

On 22 September 1972, the UN GeneralAssembly met for the Conference of theCommittee of Disarmament, whose goal was todiscuss how the existing rules framing the useof conventional weapons (i.e. weapons whichare not chemical, biological or nuclear) couldbe reinforced or modified. These discussionseventually led to the creation in 1980 of a newconvention called the Convention on CertainConventional Weapons (CCCW), Napalm wasone of the main topics on the agenda.

When this conference opened, there was littlestatistical data available on incendiary weapon,especially compared with extensive data onchemical, biological and nuclear weapons: onlyone report, commanded by U Thant called“Napalm and Other Incendiary Warfare and AllAspects of Their Possible Use: Report of theSecretary General,” existed. Yet it provided agood overview of the trajectory of napalmutilization and the technical characteristics ofthe weapon .41 The report pictured napalm as aweapon which was used indiscriminatelyagainst civilians, and which has tremendousincendiary power. If the report does mention“other incendiary weapons”, such as whitephosphorus, it refers to them only very briefly,showing that napalm, since its use in Vietnam,remained the most ‘urgent’ incendiary weaponto frame. The report concluded “that the use ofnapalm – for it was to this weapon that

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attention was principally given- ought to beforbidden but was not yet prohibited by generalinternational law.”42

Rapidly, experts who worked on the issuestarted to disagree on two points. First, theyquestioned the nature of the legal constraintsimposed on napalm: should napalm be bannedfrom the battlefield or should the conditions ofits use be redefined more precisely? Second,they disagreed on the target of the legalconstraint: should napalm or the broadercategory of incendiary weapons be the object oflegal constraints? If napalm is explicitlymentioned, the legal treaty might be regardedas too restrictive, and therefore not veryconstraining (the state can find a weapon witha different name but with very similar effects).On the other hand, the lack of consensus on thedefinition of incendiary weapon (i.e. should theweapon be defined as incendiary in light of itseffects, of its composition, or of its deliveryconditions?) could create a grey area thatstates could exploit to keep using weaponswhich share many characteristics with napalm.

Protocol III of the Convention on CertainConventional Weapons (CCCW)

Discussions continued with the help of theInternational Committee of the Red Cross,which organized the preliminary conferences ofLucerne (September 1974) and Lugarno(January 1976). These two conferences helpedto produce additional documentary basis on theeffects and the legal issues raised by napalm.In 1979, an agreement was reached andProtocol III also called ‘Protocol on Prohibitionsor Restrictions on the Use of IncendiaryWeapons’ was formalized43.

The consensus reflected in Protocol III was tokeep the generic term “incendiary weapon”rather than explicitly mention napalm,44 and tolimit its utilization rather than ban it from thebattlefield. It reiterates the principle ofdistinction, that is the prohibition, in allcircumstances, of attacking the civilian

population as such, individual civilians orcivilian objects with incendiary weapons. Itforbids the use of incendiary weapons on theground when directed against militaryobjectives not clearly separated from civilians.It also reiterates the necessity to take allfeasible precautions when incendiary weaponsare deployed (from the ground or through airdelivery) to limit the incendiary effects to themilitary objective and to avoid incidental loss ofcivilian life, injury to civilians and damage tocivilian objects. Finally the Protocol prohibitsthe use of incendiary weapons against forestsor other kinds of plants – except if such naturalelements are used to cover, conceal orcamouflage combatants or other militaryobjectives, or are themselves military objective.In sum, Protocol III does not deem the use ofnapalm as always illegal: yet, it warns of it useagainst civilians or close to civilians areas.

In Geneva, the CCCW (and with it Protocol III)was adopted by consensus on 10 October 1980.On 10 April 1980, the CCCW was opened forsignature: 50 states signed the Convention thatentered in force on 2 December 1983. Today,121 states are parties to the Convention. TheUS finally ratified it in 2009, but with areservation : it retains the right to useincendiary weapons against military objectiveslocated in concentrations of civilians where it isjudged that such use would cause fewercasualties and/or less collateral damage thanalternative weapons. While this reservationreiterates the principle of all feasibleprecaution, it also extends the right of the USto use incendiary weapons as the latter remainless destructive than many other weapons inthe arsenal, such as thermite bombings orsmall nuclear weapons.

Conclusion

This article offers new perspective on the shiftin US military doctrine and practice of bombingand the subsequent decrease in napalmutilization: napalm was framed after the

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Vietnam War as an inhumane means of warfareby activists, as a problematic weapon withregard to the laws of war by the United Nationsand, finally, as a non-strategic weapon by theUS military.

The proposed approach of this article, whichemphasizes normative aspects commonlyoverlooked when it comes to understandingpractices of war (i.e. legitimacy, symbols andlaws of war) helps to gain a full understandingof variations in weapons utilization. Moregenerally, it shows that the historiography ofbombing can be enriched by the historiographyof the weapons deployed.

In this respect, it pursues the line of somemajor works that demonstrated the necessity tostudy the social history of a weapon in order tounderstand why and when weapons were

deployed.4 5Because weapons and theirtechnical characteristics are always consideredand evaluated through a prism of perceptionsbuilt upon collective representations, it iscrucial to study how these col lectiveperceptions are created and change over time.A closer examination of the social scienceliterature reveals that these perceptions oftenshift because some actors (activists but alsointernational institutions) mobilize and framethe weapon differently: several prominentworks have depicted how chemical, nuclearweapons or even landmines have been at aparticular time of history denounced as terriblemeans of warfare.4 6 The framing – andstigmatization – of napalm in this regard is nota unique case but long remained a blind spot inthe existing literature.

SPECIAL FEATURE

Perspectives on the Bombing of Civilians From World War II to the Present

Edited by Claire Andrieu and Mark Selden

Claire Andrieu and Mark Selden, Introduction (https://apjjf.org/2016/23/Andrieu.html)

Sheldon Garon, Defending Civilians against Aerial Bombardment: AComparative/Transnational History of Japanese, German, and British Home Fronts, 1918-1945(https://apjjf.org/2016/23/Garon.html)

Matthew Evangelista, Blockbusters, Nukes, and Drones: trajectories of change over a century(https://apjjf.org/2016/23/Evangelista.html)

Mark Selden, American Fire Bombing and Atomic Bombing of Japan in History and Memory(https://apjjf.org/2016/23/Selden.html)

Marine Guillaume, Columbia University and Sciences Po, PhD. Analyst on Security issues, inthe Policy Planning Department of French Foreign Affairs Ministry.

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Notes1 This is explained in NEER, Robert M. Napalm An American Biography. Cambridge; MA andLondon; England: Harvard University Press, 2013. p195, Robert Neer quotes the interestingreference to Louis Fieser made in the Harvard official Gazette of 1977 “Louis Fieser was adistinguished researcher whose career included work on antimalarial agents, cortisone andvitamin K-1”.2 See NEER, Robert M. Napalm An American Biography. p195.3 This definition of attrition strategy is drawn from the International Encyclopedia of the FirstWorld War. It echoes the definition of the Jominian culture of annihilation as defined by Kahl,which holds ‘the application of direct and overwhelming force to destroy the enemy andachieve victory’: it implies that politics reasserts itself only after the complete destruction ofthe adversary on the battlefield; it is a capital-intensive approach that relies on the use ofoverwhelming firepower; a disdain for unconventional skills and tactics in KAHL, Colin H. “Inthe Crossfire or the Crosshairs?” International Security 32, no.1, Summer 2007:7-46.4 Martin Cook explains how the US military tried to draw lessons from the Vietnam War evenleading some to resign. See for example the testimony of General Harold K. Johnson whodeclared to the President “You have refused to tell the country they cannot fight a warwithout mobilization; you have required me to send men into battle with little hope of theirultimate victory; and you have forced us in the military to violate almost every one of theprinciples of war in Vietnam.” See COOK, Martin. “Revolt of the Generals: A Case Study inProfessional Ethics” Parameters, Spring, 20085 The development of Unarmed Aerial Vehicles or the promotion of new rules of engagementasking for rigorous actions to avoid hurting civilians. Yugoslavia War in the 1990s is anexample of conflict during which the US (and NATO) applied this strategy.6 rev. ed. New York: Meridian, 1991.7 STOCKHOLM INTERNATIONAL PEACE RESEARCH INSTITUTE, Incendiary Weapons, ASIPRI Monograph. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1975.8 See NEER, Robert M. Napalm An American Biography. Cambridge; MA and London;England: Harvard University Press, 2013. p195. See here(http://apjjf.org/2014/12/3/Mark-Selden/4065/article.html).9 STOCKHOLM INTERNATIONAL PEACE RESEARCH INSTITUTE. Incendiary Weapons. ASIPRI Monograph. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1975.10 See CHASSIN, Lionel Max. Aviation Indochine. Amiot-Dumont, 1954.11 See NEER, Robert M. Napalm An American Biography..12 See STOCKHOLM INTERNATIONAL PEACE RESEARCH INSTITUTE. Incendiary Weapons.13 Interview with General Robineau, 19/05/2014.14 See NEER, Robert M. Napalm An American Biography.15 See STOCKHOLM INTERNATIONAL PEACE RESEARCH INSTITUTE. Incendiary Weapons.16 See NEER, Robert M. Napalm An American Biography.17 See NEER, Robert M. Napalm An American Biography. This is equivalent to the overallquantity of napalm procured by the US from 1964 to 197318 Many chemists agree that the new distribution of elements constituting napalm isessentially identical to the distribution of the previous generation of napalm. They consider

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the effects, such as the capacity to ignite, identical and even superior to the previous type ofnapalm. As a weapon is categorized depending on its effects, I consider MK77 comparable tonapalm. I will elaborate on this point below.19 In response to a report by Al-Jazeera on December, 14, 2001 that blamed the US for usingnapalm during the battle of Tora Bora, General Tommy Franks replied “We’re not using theold napalm in Tora Bora”.20 In this context, the very status of combatant is also extremely hard to define.21 The practice of renaming a weapon in order to avoid the opprobrium attached to it has beenstudied by several authors interested in taboos attached to weapon. See Price, Richard M.The Chemical Weapons Taboo. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Paperbacks, 2007 and Tannenwald, Nina.The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons. CambridgeUniversity Press, 2007.22 The two strategies are not necessarily exclusive: both can be used depending on the timingof the war, whether war is at its beginning or at its final days. For example, during WWII,certain US Commanders favored a ‘precision bombing strategy’ at the beginning of theconflict, and the Joint Chief of Staff repeatedly ordered commanders to avoid massivelybombing civilian areas. This changed in the final years of the conflict wherein the attritionstrategy was widely used in aerial attack. See BIDDLE, Tami Davis. Rhetoric and Reality inAir Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914-45.Princeton Studies in International History and Politics. Princeton N.J: Princeton UniversityPress, 200223 Certain military strategists even advocated targeting incendiary weapons against poorneighborhoods of big cities: because the buildings were close to each other and because theyhoused a high density of population (especially a population which directly contributed to thewar effort by working in factories), they were ‘ideal targets’ for the annihilation strategy.24 See LEMAY, Curtis. Mission with LeMay: My Story. Doubleday, 1965.25 The specific odor of napalm was memorably recalled in Apocalypse Now, a movie directedby Francis Ford Coppola (1979), through the very famous monologue “I love the smell ofnapalm in the morning(…) it sounds like victory, like the war is going to end.”26 See LEMAY, Curtis. Mission with LeMay: My Story. .27 See also CRAWFORD, Neta C., Accountability for killing: Moral responsibility for CollateralDamage in America’s Post 9/11 Wars, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.28 See EVANGELISTA, Matthew. “Introduction, The American Way of Bombing.” In TheAmerican Way of Bombing: Changing Ethical and Legal Norms, from Flying Fortresses toDrones, edited by SHUE, Henry, and EVANGELISTA, Matthew. Ithaca ; London: CornellUniversity Press, 2014.29 See HARIMAN, Robert, LUCAITES. John Louis, 2007. No caption needed : iconicphotographs, public culture, and liberal democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.30 In fact, Plummer was not responsible for the attack, and the US Army knew it. SeeHAGOPIAN, Patrick. The Vietnam War in American Memory: Veterans, Memorials, and thePolitics of Healing. 1. paperback printing. Amherst, Mass: Univ. of Massachusetts Press,2011.31 See CHONG, Denise. The Girl in the Picture: The Kim Phuc Story. New York: Penguin,2001.

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32 The picture ‘Meeting at the Wall’ can be seen in NEER, Robert M. Napalm An AmericanBiography.33 This definition inspired by Pierre Bourdieu is given in O’NEILL, Barry, Honors, Symbols andWar, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999.34 See also PRICE, Richard M., The Chemical Weapons Taboo, Ithaca, NY: Cornell Paperbacks,200735 The historian Audoin-Rouzeau notably quotes anthropologist Françoise Héritier who agreeswith the fact that the fundamental distinction between men and women, which justifies theexclusion of women from the battlefield, is the fact that they already bleed from the inside inAUDOUIN-ROUZEAU, Stéphane, ‘Mourir par les Gaz: Une Transgression Anthropologique?’in Gaz!gaz!gaz!: la guerre chimique, 1914-1918, ed. by HISTORIAL DE LA GRANDE GUERRE(MUSEUM), LEPICK, Olivier, AUDOUIN-ROUZEAU, 1914-1918. Péronne; Milan:Historial dela grande guerre; 5 continents, 2010.37 See the development of chemical weapons as an anti-heroic weapon in my dissertation,GUILLAUME, Marine, Fighting justly in the XXth Century, 201538 See NEER, Robert M. Napalm An American Biography.39 The agent orange is an herbicide and a defoliant used as a means of warfare, notably by theUnited States during the Vietnam War40 See UN archive SG/SM/1964/ORG/714.41 See UNITED NATIONS GROUP OF CONSULTANT EXPERTS ON NAPALM AND OTHERINCENDIARY WEAPONS, ROLF BJÖRNERSTEDT, United Nations Secretary General. 1973.Napalm and other incendiary weapons and all aspects of their possible use: report of theSecretary General, Number 16. United Nations.42 See NEER, Robert M. Napalm An American Biography.43 The CCCW was originally built open 3 Protocols: Protocol I on Non-Detectable Fragments;Protocol II on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby Traps and OtherDevices; and finally Protocol III on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of IncendiaryWeapon. Today, the CCCW contains 5 Protocols (the Protocol IV on Blinding laser weaponsentered in force on 1998 and the Protocol V on Explosive remnants of war entered in force on2006).44 The definition of incendiary weapon seems to be framed so as napalm fits entirely with thecategory: it excludes many weapons (such as munitions in which the incendiary effects is notspecifically designed to cause burn injury to persons) yet used in the battlefield45 See for example ELLIS, John, The Social History of the Machine Gun, John Hopkinspaperbacks ed. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1986; ,See PERRIN, Noel, Givingup the Gun: Japan’s Reversion to the Sword, 1543-1879, Boston: D.R. Godine, 1988. See alsothe extensive work of Graham Spinardi on nuclear weapon and social perceptions.46 A whole literature studying the concept of ‘norm entrepreneurs’ or ‘moral entrepreneurs’studies this question. See for example PRICE, Richard, “Revering the Gun Sights:Transnational Civil Society Targets Land Mines”, International Organization, 52, no3,Summer 1998: 613-44; EVANGELISTA, Matthew, Unarmed Forces; The transnationalMovement to End the Cold War, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002; BUSBY, JoshuaW., Moral Movements and Foreign Policy, Cambridge Studies in International Relations 116,NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010